B.C. town shocked by murder charges against former resident

GORDON HOEKSTRA, Vancouver Sun10.19.2011

RCMP Insp. Brendan Fitzpatrick, E Division Major Crime holds up the photo of 21 year old Cody Alan Legebokoff charged with 3 counts of first degree murderin the murders of Jill Stacey Stuchenko, Cynthia Frances Maas and Natasha Lynn Montgomery. Legebokoff was arrested this past Friday at Prince Geoirge Regional Correction Centre where he is currently awaiting trial in the homicide of Loren Donn Leslie.Brent Braaten
/ Prince George CItizen

Jill Stuchenko was a mother from Prince George. She was reported missing to police on October 22, 2009. At the time, the Prince George RCMP conducted a missing persons investigation and sought the assistance of the media and the public to help find her. Her body was found on October 26th, 2009 in a gravel pit off Otway Road in the outskirts of Prince George.Handout
/ RCMP

Cynthia Maas was reported missing by her friends on Sept. 23, 2010. Her family was also concerned because they had not heard from her over the course of several weeks. Her body was discovered in LC Gunn Park, also in a remote area of Prince George.Handout
/ RCMP

Natasha Montgomery was originally from Quesnel but had been living in the Prince George area. When she failed to connect with her family after a number of weeks, her friends contacted the RCMP to report her missing. She was reported missing the same day as Cynthia Maas. While her body has not been recovered, investigative findings have resulted in a murder charge in relation to her disappearance.Handout
/ RCMP

Cody Alan Legebokoff, 21, of Prince George, has been charged with three counts of first degree murder in connection with the deaths of Jill Stacey Stuchenko, 35, Cynthia Frances Maas, 35, and Natasha Lynn Montgomery, 23. Legebokoff was arrested this past Friday at the Prince George Regional Correctional Center where he is currently awaiting trial in the November 2010 homicide of 15 year old Loren Donn Leslie from Fraser Lake, B.C.Handout
/ RCMP

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The small, close-knit north-central B.C. community of Fort St. James is still reeling over three new murder charges levelled Monday against the 21-year-old son of a prominent family.

Residents were already shocked and saddened when the first charge was laid, over the slaying of teenager Loren Leslie in the area in November 2010, but the three additional charges have compounded those feelings, said Brenda Gouglas, the community’s acting mayor.

Cody Alan Legebokoff, who grew up in Fort St. James, is now facing the label of serial killer.

“It’s quite tragic. It’s very painful,” said Gouglas.

Although she did not know Legebokoff personally, Gouglas said people she has talked to cannot associate the charges with the young man they knew. “Some of the kids that went to school with him are quite taken aback. It’s hard for them to believe,” said Gouglas of the murder charges.

The picture that has emerged of Legebokoff is of a regular, small-town kid.

Legebokoff has been described by those who knew him as “perfectly normal.” He was a young man who played minor hockey, liked to snow board and also hunted and fished in the tiny community of Fort St. James.

Those who knew him say he also came from a well-off family.

On his mother’s side, Legebokoff was a member of the Goodwin family, who formerly owned Stuart Lake Lumber, one of the community’s three sawmills, since shut down and sold. A deal to sell the mill and timber-cutting rights to West Fraser Timber for $13.5 million fell through in 2009, but Dunkley Lumber bought the mill and rights for an undisclosed price later the same year.

The family also has real-estate holdings in the community, according to acquaintances.

Keith Playfair, a longtime Fort St. James logging-company owner, described the family as pillars of the community. “They are very good people,” he said.

Legebokoff’s father coached minor hockey. Legebokoff, who graduated from Fort St. James Secondary in 2008, has an older brother as well as a sister who is still in high school.

Of the charges, Playfair said they were “hard to swallow.”

Playfair added: “The flip side is this is a tragedy for the other families as well.”

The RCMP announced the three new first-degree murder charges on Monday in Prince George. Legebokoff is charged in the deaths of Jill Stacey Stuchenko and Cynthia Frances Maas, both 35, and Natasha Lynn Montgomery, 23. The bodies of Stuchenko and Maas were discovered in Prince George, while Montgomery, who was last seen in Prince George, is missing.

Legebokoff was already in the Prince George Correctional Centre awaiting trial for the slaying of 15-year-old Loren Donn Leslie of Fraser Lake. RCMP said they undertook a 10-month investigation that included the use of forensic teams from the United States to gather evidence for the new charges.

Legebokoff was arrested for the first murder when RCMP officers decided to check a suspicious pickup truck on Nov. 27, 2010 pulling onto Highway 27 off of an unused logging road between Vanderhoof and Fort St. James.

A search along the snow-covered logging road led to the discovery of Leslie’s body.

Legebokoff, who had lived for a short period in Lethbridge, Alta., had been living in Prince George since 2009.

Fort St. James, adjacent to Stuart Lake, is a remote community located at the end of Highway 27, about 50 kilometres north of Vanderhoof and 160 kilometres northwest of Prince George by road.

It has a population of about 4,700 when the Nak’azdli First Nation reserve and surrounding rural population are included, but the town seems smaller. Its centre — including a small shopping mall, municipal hall, hockey arena and College of New Caledonia campus — is encompassed in a four-block area.

Just emerging from an economic downturn with the help of a nearby $1.3-billion gold and copper mine, the town is tight-knit, said 40-year resident Edwina Sutherland.

She said the murder charges against one of their own, particularly from a well-known family, are confusing. “It just doesn’t make sense,” said Sutherland.

Christopher Lebrun said the new charges have unsettled people in the community. He said his stepdaughter and her friends have been frightened by the idea that these were serial killings. “Before it was just one, but now it’s something else,” he said.

Although the RCMP have not labelled him a serial killer for his alleged crimes, Simon Fraser University criminology professor Neil Boyd said if Legebokoff is responsible for the deaths, the label fits.

“The definition [of a serial killer] is two or three or more killings,” he said.

He said it is unusual for a serial killer to be as young as 20 — most are men in their late 20s and early 30s — though it is not unprecedented.

But, Boyd said, it is not unusual for serial-killer suspects to have attracted no attention and been viewed as regular people.

And while the Hannibal Lecter character from the movie Silence of the Lambs has created a popular notion that serial killers are brilliant, tortured individuals, that’s just not the case, said Boyd.

Serial killers have similar backgrounds to most people convicted of crimes: They tend to come from blue-collar, emotionally impoverished environments, he said.

The RCMP have made a point of saying Legebokoff used social media to correspond with friends, associates and potential girlfriends. He sometimes used the moniker 1CountryBoy, police have said.

Boyd said if social media are an element in the case, it’s simply a reflection of the fact that social media are widely used. “Social media can be used for good or bad,” he said.

A Radio-Canada reporter has been arrested for alleged criminal harassment while pursuing the subject of a story. According to Radio-Canada, reporter Antoine Trépanier was arrested Tuesday night by Gatineau police. He was released on a promise to appear in court. Trépanier was called by Gatineau police Tuesday evening and an officer requested that he come […]

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